AutoCAD is used by professionals world-wide to create the drawing files that define the buildings, equipment and products we use every day. If you are looking for a job in design or construction, you need to know AutoCAD in order to command high wages and job security. These easy tips will help new users get up to speed fast.

Use the Pull Down Menus

If you look at the top of the AutoCAD screen you will see menus like Draw, Edit, Modify, etc. Use these menus to launch AutoCAD commands. As you become more familiar with AutoCAD you may elect to use the toolbars and the command prompt to issue commands, but new users learn and work faster if they use the pull down menus.

Keep Your Eye on the Command Prompt

At the bottom of the screen you will find the Command prompt. Keep your eye on this space when you issue commands. You will find that every command you issue puts its options on this line. So, if you start the CIRCLE command, you will find you can type D to indicate that you want to specify a diameter for the circle you want to create.

Learn How to Identify Points

New AutoCAD users struggle with the many ways in which they can enter points in AutoCAD. You can type them (3,4), you can click your mouse to select them, you can use Object Snaps to pick up points on existing geometry (hold down the shift key and right-click to see the Osnap menu). You can Also select a point, move your mouse up or down, right or left and type a distance. Take 30 minutes and learn all the ways you can select points in AutoCAD by reviewing its Help files. you will save yourself hundreds of hours of work and create better drawings.

Never Ever Draw What You Can Copy

New AutoCAD users spend too much time drawing. If you’ve ever drawn something, you should never need to draw the thing again. Learn how to use the BLOCK and WBLOCK commands to create named geometry you can use over and over again. Learn how to use the INSERT or DESIGN CENTER and EXPLODE commands to place editable geometry in your drawing.

Learn How to Use Model Space/Paper Space or Layouts

Its really very simple. You Click the MODEL tab. You draw your objects at full scale (one inch in the real world is one inch in AutoCAD’s model space). Select a Layout to toggle into paper space. Specify the size of your paper. Use the MVIEW command to “cut a hole” in the paper and display the objects in model space. Select the edge of the hole, right-click and choose a scale for the view. Double-click inside the hole and pan the view so its centered. Double-click outside the hole. From the File menu choose Plot to plot your scaled drawing. The instructions for using Layouts vary slightly based on which version of AutoCAD you are using, but the basic technique is always the same. Draw full scale in model space. Create scaled drawings in Layouts.

Be Organized

If you don’t know how to create and navigate to folders in Windows, life with AutoCAD will be a misery. It will scatter your files all over your hard disk or network. you will never be able to find anything. There are a million books and websites that review Windows fundamentals, take a moment to master the basic skills they review. you will spend less time looking for things.

Use External References

If you are working as members of a team, put the geometry you need in one file. Everyone can then create new files which externally reference that file. The result is, multiple people can work on the same project at the same time. You use the XREF command to place one drawing inside another. You can also use Design Center to insert external references.

Learn How to Use Dimension & Text Styles

To define text fonts that you use in your drawings, use the STYLE command. To define how dimensions look use the DIMSTYLE command. If you don’t use dimension and text styles, you spend a great deal of time tweaking each and every dimension and text block you create. If you define a style changing the style updates all the text and dimensions.

Back Up All The Time

If you don’t know how your drawings are being backed up, go find out right now. Every drawing represents hundreds or thousands of man hours. A lost, deleted or corrupt drawing file can mean lots of lost revenue. Small design shops using AutoCAD are the worst offenders. They rarely back up, they often lose data. You need to back up in such a way that you can go back four or five versions of your drawing, because often problems in a drawing aren’t noticed for a long time. So many lines, so little time . . .

Find Out What Other Folks In the Office Do

Don’t be the lone wolf in your AutoCAD office. Use the templates, title blocks, text styles, dimension styles, plot styles and block libraries everyone else uses. It saves everybody time. Your drawings are easier for others to edit and plot. You can edit and plot the drawings of others. Its always better to ask questions (even multiple times) than do something no one else in the office will understand later.

I hope these ten tips will help make you a better AutoCAD user, and that you will learn to love the application as so many have. As complex as it is, as confusing as it can be, there’s almost nothing you can’t do in AutoCAD one way or another. You can’t say that about every CAD application.

We’ve got snap and grid in AutoCAD. Let’s talk about snap and grid. Let’s see how we can use it and why wewould use it.

Snap restricts the cursor movements to specified intervals. That is handy. Lines will have a specific length.

Still. If you’re using object snaps than you can pick a point that is not on an interval that has been specified. We’ll talk about object snap later.

With grid switched on dots are displayed in the screen. The dots help to visualize distances. Often the grid interval is the same as the snap interval.

That is important. You can have grid dots displayed in the screen. Now you want to print your drawing. The dots are not printed.

OK. We know what snap and grid are. But we want to know more. We want to know how we can set the intervals and how we can switch it on and off. Let’s start with setting the intervals. There are two ways for doing that. Whatever way you choose. You do it over the Drafting Settings dialog box.

Click on Tools in the menu bar. A pull down menu shows up. In the pull down menu click on Drafting Settings. The Drafting Settings dialog box is displayed.

There are four tabs in the Drafting Settings dialog box. The Snap and Grid tab is in front. That’s exactly what we want.

In the dialog box we see two check boxes and we see four areas. The checkboxes can be used for switching on or off snap and grid.

Let’s have a look at the Snap area and the Grid area. First the Snap area. In that area you can enter values for the spacing.

You can enter a value for the X spacing and you can enter a value for the Y pacing. The spacing set the interval I was talking about.

There is more you can do in that area. You can enter an angle, an X base, and a Y base. The angle gives the

angle of the snap intervals. Most of the time you do not change the angle. You leave the angle at zero. But the X base and the Y base.

What’s that?

The X base and the Y base gives the starting point of the snap. As before. Do not change it. Leave it as it is. At zero.

You now know how you can do the settings for the snap. You do it in the Snap area of the Drafting Settings dialog box.

But we can also do something with the settings of the grid. That is done in the Grid area of the dialog box.

This time we can do less.

We can only change the X spacing and the Y spacing. We cannot change the angle or the X base and Y base of the grid.

This is what is done most of the time. Most of the time the spacing for the grid is the same as the spacing for the snap.

That is what is happening. The grid follows the snap settings for angle and the X base and Y base. So there is no need to change those settings.

This is what we now saw. You can do the settings of the snap and the grid in the Drafting Settings dialog box. And you can switch them on and off.

Before I continue. I must tell you about the third area in the Drafting Settings dialog box. It is the Snap style and type area.

For the snap type we can set Grid snap and we can set PolarSnap. If we go for a Grid snap type then e can select a rectangular snap or an isometric snap.

If you’re creating isometric drawings, then you want to go for an isometric snap. The snap will have the isometric angles.

I’m not going to talk about PolarSnap now. I will do that later. I will do that as we’re talking about Polar Tracking. In the next article.

But there is another way. Look at your screen. Do you see the status bar? In the status bar there are two buttons.

In the status bar there is the Snap button and there is the Grid button. You can click on the buttons. To have snap and grid switched on and off.

Something else you can do with the buttons. You can right click them. If you do a short cut menu is displayed.

If you right click the Snap button then you’ll find the following options in the shortcut menu:

- PolartSnap On

- Grid Snap On

- Off

- Settings

If you right click on the Grid button then you’ll find the following options in the shortcut menu:

- On

- Off

- Settings

You can imagine where the on and off options stand for. Those options can be sued to switch snap and grid on or off.

But we already saw. There is a quicker way. We can also click on the Snap and Grid buttons in the status bar. In fact. There is another quick way.

You can press the F7 function key to switch grid on or off. And you can press the F9 function key to switch snap on or off.

Oh. In the shortcut menu under the Snap button you also see the PolarSnap On option. As I said before. We’ll talk about it alter.

But there is the Settings option in the shortcut menus under the Snap button and the Grid button. Click on that option.

If you do the Drafting Settings dialog box is opened. We already have seen what can be done in the Drafting Settings dialog box.

But this is what we now know. Using the shortcut menu under the Snap and Grid button. That is a quicker way to open the Drafting Settings dialog box.

This is it for today. Now you know everything that you need to know about snap and grid. Tomorrow we’re going to talk about polar tracking.

See you tomorrow.

AutoCAD has a lot of tools that are accessible to automate your work flow, and make your job easier, odds are, you’re already using a lot of them without realizing them.  What we’re going to cover today are ways that make these tools work more readily for you.

Tip number 1:  Use templates

In fact, you already are; whenever you create a new AutoCAD document, it loads up the default template.  However, if you’re going to be doing lots of variations on the same sort of design work and drawing, you may want to make your changes of all the things that are common among them and save that file as a template.  Templates are a great way to save time by setting unit types and drawing limits, setting your snap, grid and other drawing settings, organizing your layer information before you begin, and pre-set a lot of common information.

If you’re working for a business, odds are you’re using a company provided template that provides this consistency across multiple draftspersons.  You may end up using a client supplied template, and you’ll be told which templates to use – templates make sure the output from multiple workers is consistent (which is why businesses are big on them) and they can save you a lot of time…but only if they’re designed right from the beginning.

To make a new template, first get your parameters all set up, in a regular drawing.  Then go to File  > Save As and save it as a template.  It’s as easy as that – though you should make sure you save it in a folder you’ll be able to find later.

Tip number 2:  Object Snaps

Object Snaps (OSNAPS) are the most frustrating tool in AutoCAD.  Until you learn what they’re doing, and you wonder how you could’ve ever lived without them in the past.  An object snap is an attachment that you can tell to go to one of the gripping points on an existing object.  These gripping points are things like the centerpoint of an object, or the end point of a line segment.  An OSNAP lets you link an object to one of those attachment points with absolute certainty for provided attachment points.

It’s when you get to the “fuzzy” OSNAPs that things get a little counterintuitive.  You can set OSNAPs that are designed to be perpendicular to a selected objects, click to the nearest object, run at a tangent, and even some intersection driven ones.

Most OSNAPs are activated in ‘running mode’ – you type the command in the command buffer, and they just work.  While this is the fastest way to use a commonly repeated OSNAP, for people who don’t keep the arcane commands in their forebrains, AutoCAD has given iconic OSNAPs as well.  You can access them by bringing up the OSNAP dialog box, or by holding down the shift key and right clicking an object to pull up a context driven menu.  Even so, if you use a lot of OSNAPs, you’re eventually going to learn the three letter codes to use them at run time just to save yourself time.  (It also has the benefit of turning the OSNAP off once that command has been run.

Tip 3:  Learn The Commands

While we touched on it in the prior tip on using OSNAP, it’s always worth it to learn how to use the command line prompts for AutoCAD.  Typing three characters takes a fraction of a second, versus a few seconds for using a mouse to find the icon, navigate through the menu system, click OK, then repeat for turning off the functionality you just used.  It’s always faster to learn the keyboard shortcuts, and more than any other tip, these will save you the most time.

Architectural software comes in many different types, prices, features, and quality. I won’t talk about all of your options here, as there are literally dozens of different small, inexpensive programs available at your local software depot.

Instead, I will focus on the major players in the architectural software market for design professionals. This will also be useful for beginner designers…especially those who may want to share (or pass-on) their files to an architect or engineer without having compatibility issues.

Here are some of the most popular architectural software programs available, along with my comments, based on my 13 years of experience working with some of them. These programs are widely used in design firms all over the nation, but can also be used by everyday consumers, as well.

• Microstation
• Archicad
• Chief Architect
• SketchUp
• AutoDesk Products, such as AutoCad, AutoCAD LT, Revit, VIZ, 3ds Max, AutoSketch, Maya, and other plugins and add-ons.

Below are some descriptions and comments about the list above…

Microstation

Many who are die-hard microstation users will quickly point out that it is a much more stable platform to work with, as opposed to the industry standard AutoCad. Many suggest that it is much easier to deal with, and that the programmers did many things much more intelligently in their architectural software design, as it relates to user experience.

One glaring problem is this…
Even IF microstation is a better program than AutoCAD, it’s still got some major flaws for the end user. The first and most critical flaw, is the fact that it only comprises about 5-10% of the architectural software market. Therefore, if the software is not COMPLETELY compatible in BOTH DIRECTIONS, this poses workflow problems for our design team…and yes, it has some serious compatibility issues with AutoCAD.

No matter how much Microstation users want to deny it, there ARE compatibility issus, especially if you use x-refs and images/OLE objects in your AutoCAD drawings. When someone opens your AutoCAD files in Microstation, often the x-ref’s become unviewable, and the user will then need to contact the architect to either “bind” his drawings into one drawing, or other similar method. OR, they will have to convert the drawings themselves. As an architect, this is not practical.

You can find more information about Bentley’s Microstation on their website at http://www.bentley.com.

Archicad

Archicad is more of an all-around 2d/3d application that is intended to provide a total project output, including modeling & rendering, as well as 2 dimensional construction documents. Changes made to the model are updated in all views, such as plans, elevations, 3d model, etc.

Archicad stores all the information about the building in a central database; changes made in one view are updated in all others, including floor plans, sections/elevations, 3D models and bills of material.

Although I do not personally have experience with Archicad, they are definitely making an impact in the architectural software industry, however still only occupying a very small percentage of the market. One thing I am not so sure about, is the single database file structure.

My concern is that I need to be able to delegate different responsibilities to different team members, and if only one person can be working on the file at a time, then this poses a major workflow problem. It is possible that Graphisoft (the makers of Archicad) has addressed this, you can find out more information about their product on their website at http://www.graphisoft.com.

Chief Architect

Chief Architect is one of the leading software products for residential design. Since my business is 99.9% commercial, I cannot speak to it’s effectiveness, but I do know they have marketed the product well. The graphics are limited, with respect to the more expensive competition, but it seems to provide a very acceptable output from that perspective.

I tried a demo about 12 years ago, and quickly realized it’s limitations in architectural software design for commercial projects, so I have not pursued it for our design purposes.

You can find more information here at their website… http://www.chiefarchitect.com.

SketchUp

SketchUp is becoming extremely popular and more well-known, especially now that Google has purchased the software rights. We use SketchUp often to convey design ideas to our clients, as well as within our design team.

It’s ease of use, and ability to quickly generate 3-dimensional representations of building design, make it a very useful piece of architectural software. It’s rendering capabilities are limited, compared to 3ds Max, but the price tag is proportional. SketchUp will not break your bank account, whereas 3ds Max is only affordable if you are really making some good money from your 3d modeling efforts

I highly recommend this product. You can get more information at www.sketchup.com.

AutoCAD

AutoCad, by AutoDesk, is the standard by which all CAD software programs are compared…not because it’s necessarily a better program, but because it occupies, by far, the greatest market-share for professionals than any other CAD software program available.

In fact, for the 13+ years that I’ve been using AutoCad (since version 10), only about 5% of our consultants or other design professionals have used anything other than AutoCad, or other AutoDesk products. You can find a link to a large selection of AutoDesk products at http://architecturalsoftware.jdlarchitects.com.

Now, of course, AutoDesk will tell you that this IS because their program is superior to the others. This may be the case, but you will get differing opinions from all sorts of designers, architects, and engineers. Many of the complaints, including my own, are that AutoCad is not very user-friendly. This is definitely the case.

The program is so powerful, that it could take someone decades to master it’s features. Often, it is so much easier to just use the features you know, than to keep digging into it’s vast feature sets…you could literally spend all of your time trying to learn all of the programs features, but you would never get any real work done.

That being said, I have used AutoCad for 13+ years now, and if it is used correctly, with the proper sheet setups and reference files, your workflow can be as efficient as with any architectural software product.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, even if there are debatable issues about architectural software quality and user-friendliness, it just doesn’t make sense to me, to use anything other than AutoDesk’s products. I may not be enthused about it, but I have to ensure that my workflow is efficient. The unnecessary hoops to jump through when using CAD software that only 5% of the world is utilizing, is not practical.

I want my file structure to be maintained on my consultant’s end, and since the design process requires back-and-forth transferring of files throughout the process (sometimes dozens or even hundreds of times on large projects), it is obviously an unacceptable solution if you have compatibility issues to deal with.

Yes, there are plenty of design teams fighting their way through this process, but the problem is that their upper management, on the average, are not savvy enough to current software applications to care about “how” their production happens…they just care that it gets done. What they don’t realize, is that if they implemented proper workflow usage of architectural software, they could save literally hundreds of man-hours on each job.

In the 21st century technology has expanded its wings in almost every sphere of knowledge and life style. Hence with the enhancement of technology has empowered Engineers and Designers to get the power to excel with CAD.

Due to the advancement of CAD (computer aided design) there is no painstaking workout of the engineers and draughts-men standing near the drawing board with a huge drafter and trying to draw their concepts.

Recreation of designs & drawings has become so easy today that it takes only an unimaginable fraction of a second. Sharing of a single platform helps the draughts man to divide the time consumption and hence increases the productivity.

A completely new drawing can be created with a base drawing and slight modification of some part of it and unlike in paper drawings where a draughts man has to redraw again the whole drawing which, consumes not only his time but also reduces productivity and interest in work.

Once converted to CAD format, the drawings can be copied any number of times, any part can be added/removed to a drawing without disturbing the original one. Various engineering data can be retrieved as well from the drawings without doing any further calculations manually.

What is CAD?

CAD is the short term for “Computer Aided Designing” or sometimes spelled as “CADD” which refers to “Computer Aided Designing and Draughting”. It’s the process of conversion of design data into digital format that enable the data handling easier, quicker and safer. Through CAD technology, almost any type of designs and drawings can be done. Designers from various fields such as Engineering, Architecture, Fashion, Textile, and Graphics are now days highly dependent on CAD technologies.

CAD is a computer-assisted technology, used for making various types of graphics designs. It has inherited its base technology from Co-ordinate Geometry and Mathematics. Further developments have been made to suit different domains and their related design requirements. The basic entities used in any CAD environment are point, line, polygon and text. These entities have been further modified to create circle, ellipse, parabola, hyperbola, mesh and 3D objects like Sphere, rhombus, cube, cylinder and so on.

Software in Use

Based on the concept of CAD technology, many CAD software have been developed by software giants like Auto-desk Inc, Bentley, Dassult Systemes, Some of the leading software in the industry are Auto-CAD, Micro-station, CATIA, Pro-Engineer, Uni-graphics, Solid-Edge, STAAD Pro, Auto-Civil, Auto-desk Inventor and the list goes on and on.

It is frequently seen in use for engineering fields, although it is also applied for other vector graphics designs in no fewer manners. Due to CAD facilities, the repetition of work are minimized, exact accuracy can be achieved; reproduction is not a problem now days. After conversion into digital format it can also be sent through electronic mail to any part of the world as an editable file. Due to availability of a lot of file formats, the same file can be opened and used in a variety of CAD software.

Computer aided design (CAD) Process:

In CAD, generally the drawings are done according to the dimensions given either in a hard copy like paper or it may have been mentioned in a raster or image file, which is a scanned copy of the paper drawing. If the source drawing is a hard copy, then putting the hard copy by the side and referring to the same does the drawings. But this is a cumbersome process. So another process has been developed in which, the hard copy is scanned and the same is attached into the drawing platform say, Auto CAD. Then it becomes easier to draw the elements. This type of draughting is called as on-line draughting.

Area of Use:

As it is easy to work with cad software the authorities, engineers, draughts-men in many part of the world have already begun to work with the most advanced facilities and technologies like CAD (Computer Aided Designing) for creation, modification, reproduction, safely store and enhancement of dynamism in their drawings, such as: Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Engineering, Architectural Engineering, Aerospace, Automobile, Manufacturing, Production, Plumbing, Piping, HVAC and Fashion Design etc…

Prospects:

From this inception, it has been human nature to innovate, discover, invent new things and so has been his creation. Design may be pronounced as the synonym for creation. So there is no end to man’s creation, design and hence CAD. By passage of time it’ll be even smarter, quicker and sophisticated.

Before taking a course in AutoCAD, designers should confirm it covers:

AutoCAD’s Drawing & Editing Commands – Learning how to use AutoCAD’s drawing and editing commands requires learning how to interpret AutoCAD’s somewhat arcane user interface. Mastering the command prompt, selecting options, using pull down and right-click menus, navigating dialog boxes & tool palettes are all critical to making designers fast, effective AutoCAD users. AutoCAD has more than 3000 commands, so the focus for any course should be teaching students not just how to use a given set of commands, but how to master new tools as and when required.

Setting Up & Plotting Drawings – Every AutoCAD user needs to understand how to use a template file to start a new drawing because so many projects use template files to control title blocks, drawing scale, dimension appearence and other drawing standards. Designers must know how to plot drawings, work with layouts, assign plot styles and use plot styles tables. Without this information, designers can find plotting consumes far too much of their design time.

Dimensioning Design Geometry – Designers need to know how to define and modify dimension styles, how to create dimensions and how to scale dimensions. They should understand how to move dimension styles from drawing to drawing, and how to create template files which set dimension styles for use in future drawings. They should know how to create dimensions in Model Space and in Paper Space.

Creating Text & Tables – AutoCAD has a host of tools that make creating text, tables, and bill of materials charts easier. Courses should cover how to define text styles, how to create schedules and how to import data from Microsoft Excel.

Using Blocks, Wblocks and Xrefs – AutoCAD makes it easy to reuse design geometry, and mastering the tools required to bring symbols & design geometry from drawing to drawing saves hundreds of design hours on even the smallest projects. AutoCAD’s DesignCenter is an indispensible tool for designers and it is critical that designers master it in order to be effective at moving geometry from drawing to drawing.

In addition to these fundamental skills, AutoCAD users benefit from mastering AutoCAD’s 3D modeling commands because creating a 3D model can make creating 2D elevations and sections so much easier and more accurate. They should also learn some easy customization techniques (like creating custom tool palettes) because it lets them reduce the time the spend on repetitive tasks.

Before a designer invests in any course, they should confirm these skills will be delivered and drilled extensively. Learning AutoCAD badly means you are at a disadvantage for months or years to come, until you pick up the skills better trained workers got from the outset. If you are going to spend twenty to forty hours learning AutoCAD, make sure your time is well invested.

Nancy Fulton is the publisher of the Complete Support Training Site which delivers instruction in AutoCAD 14, AutoCAD 2000, AutoCAD 2000i, AutoCAD 2002, AutoCAD 2004, AutoCAD 2005, AutoCAD 2006 and AutoCAD 2007 as well as other Autodesk products.

About the Author Nancy Fulton has been training designers to use AutoCAD for more than a decade. She publishes the Complete Support AutoCAD training site which features of hundreds of free AutoCAD tutorials.